Child . . . Child . . .

Today I was feeling somewhat flat and listless.  At work I wore the mask, but underneath I felt out of sorts.  This wasn't made any better by an after work meeting.
When I finally arrived home I decided that while I waited for AGA to arrive, I would make a nice cup of tea, sit out on the balcony, and read my book.

This photograph was taken this afternoon by Kirk Dale

Cold Comfort Farm.

Have you read it?

I first read it in the 1990s and fell in love it.

It is an extremely amusing book.

I like it a lot.

The book was written by Stella Gibbons (1901-1989) and published in 1932.  In the following year it won the Prix Etranger for the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize which caused Virginia Woolf to utter some extremely waspish comments.
Seeing Virginia Woolf's feather's ruffled makes me happy too!

Cold Comfort Farm is a parody, a comedy laughing gentle at the writings of Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, and the rural dramas of the day - so full of angst and overwrought description, tedious in their long-windedness.

Here is the review printed at the back of my 2009, Penguin Books edition:

"When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex.  At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets he doomed Starkadders, an eccentric group of relatives suffering from a wide variety of ailments.  But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people.  Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand.  A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time."

Here is one quote for you:

(The scene is between Seth and his mother, Judith)

Judith's breath came in long shudders.  She thrust her arms deeper into her shawl.  The porridge gave an ominous leering heave; it might almost have been endowed with life, so uncannily did its movements keep pace with the human passions that throbbed above it.

'Cur', said Judith, levelly, at last, 'Coward! Liar! Libertine!  Who were you with last night?  Moll at the mill or Violet at the vicarage?  Or Ivy, perhaps, at the ironmongery?  Seth - my son . . . Her deep, dry voice quivered, but she whipped it back, and her next words flew at him like a lash.

'Do you want to break my heart?'

'Yes,' said Seth, with an elemental simplicity.

The porridge boiled over.

The book was made into a movie in 1995 which I have on DVD but while it is itself rather amusing; it lacks the wit, the comic description, and the word play that I love in the book.

Funny and witty, it is never cruel, and the ending is a happy one for everyone involved.

I recommend you to this book -

- and I recommend Stella Gibbons!

This photograph comes from the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Website